


Fury's Little Girl.

by Thousandsmiles



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Natalya Romanova, Red Room, SHIELD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-10-15
Packaged: 2018-07-18 11:19:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7313113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thousandsmiles/pseuds/Thousandsmiles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Natasha joinging SHIELD fic with some generous dollops of her past. Based of off Natasha and Fury's relationship in CATWS.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own The Avengers or Captain America.

Sleep is elusive. And yet the nights are never ending. A hunt and chase and still her quarry and her prey eludes her as the ever-needed sleep. The irony is bitter. Natalya Romanova didn’t know when it happened, when she first become aware that she wanted to be out of the control of the Red Room, that she didn’t want to serve those ruling the motherland anymore. Which, to say, was strange and another bitter irony for she who read people like a book and took on roles as easily she put on clothes, that she didn’t know herself, that she hadn’t see it coming.  She didn’t know when it was that she became aware that she had been keeping a ledger, dripping red, and so sentimental, so weak for an assassin and a spy. But she wasn’t that only. She was quite painfully, a human. A woman, broken and twisted like a bone that had healed wrong. And she wanted out. The pain had finally become too much and for the first time, she truly thought about leaving, about going. Ah, but another bitter irony. For she couldn’t leave. She didn’t know how to and still survive. Which led to yet another irony as bitter as time because she was being hunted by a man for her deeds at the command of an organization she wanted nothing of but could not escape? Life, she summarized, was bitter and harsh. Not as if she hadn’t known it, but everything comes into such sharp focus and leaves a deeper imprint when you are going to die.

And she was going to, because she wasn’t sure if she really wanted to win, to stay alive. Oh, she would fight, because she had been fighting for too long, lived through too much, to just give up. But deep inside, she lacked conviction and she knew she was going to die because of it……….

She hadn’t expected him to see through her. To see her, as he so clearly did. Although truth be told she should have, because how else could he have kept up with her if he was not like-minded?  But he did. He saw the brokenness, the raw wounds, the pain she usually hid in her eyes, saw the ledger she guarded close to her heart and knew. And he didn’t kill her. Instead he offered her the one thing she wanted. And with it, so much more.  He offered her escape and with it, the chance to atone, to do right, to clear her ledger of the red it carried. And Natalya Romanova for the first time in years trusted, and took her first chance at making her own life.

There was a lot of shouting when he came back with her in tow and for a moment Natalya wondered if she had exchanged one Red Room for another and prepared to bolt. But when she saw the eyes of the handler, saw the worry in it, and realized that most the anger in the man’s voice was born out of worry for his agent, that she knew that nothing could be farther from the Red Room, where failure meant either death or torture by the hands of your own commander. So she didn’t bolt. Instead she struggled, (yes struggled because Natalya Romanova did not strip herself bare for anyone, yet still she had to be honest), through the negotiations that had to be done to ensure that she wasn’t a Trojan horse. It took a long time. But the man who had brought her in, stayed for as much as he could and when he wasn’t there, his handler, a man she still couldn’t understand yet but knew was good, was there instead.

It was in her very last interview, before a decision was made concerning her entry into SHIELD, that she met him. The man who, although he couldn’t be her handler, was to her what Phil Coulson was to Clint Barton. The man who taught her what she needed to know for her to make her own principles in her life. In short the man who taught her how to build the life Clint Barton had given back to her.

Natalya sat in the steel chair, her hands bound to the armrests by built in manacles and her legs similarly trapped so. They did not plan on making any mistakes with her and she was mildly flattered at this tribute to her talents but not pleased. She rested back in the chair and waited in the small, white room for someone to enter.  When Nick Fury, director of SHIELD entered, she was faintly surprised. He walked in dropped a file on the table and collapsed on the chair opposite hers.  He sat propped up in the chair and just watched her for a long time. Usually it wouldn’t have been near long enough to make her uncomfortable or to fidget. She could stay perfectly still for hours if required. However after ten minutes Natalya began to feel uncomfortable. It was the way he was staring at her, she knew, because no one had ever looked at her like that before. It was not the way a man looks at an attractive woman, it was not the way someone would look at an enemy, not the way someone would watch at something disgusting or repulsive nor was it the way someone would look at a tool or an asset.  

Finally Fury sat up straight pulled her file to him and opened it, thumbing through some of them. “Natalya Romanova, Russian born, Red Room operative, spy and assassin. You’ve been on our radar for quite some time, Miss Romanova. In fact you moved from potential threat to full out threat quite some time ago, which is why we dispensed Agent Barton to dispose of you. So imagine my surprise when his handler called back to say that Agent Barton had found you and instead made a different call from the one we sent him in to make.  Needless to say, I was not pleased, because given your history I did not think what he had done was a very wise idea.” Natalya stayed silent.

“However,” continued Fury, “despite Agent Barton being a frequent pain in my rear, he is known for his very keen sight. So I was inclined to think that the call he made had something of sustenance.” He stopped and indicated the file he held. “Do you know what these are?”

“My file,” Natalya replied.

“These are the reports of every single interview we put you through since you came here with Agent Barton. Do you know what is the common denominator with all of them?”

Natalya waited.  He watched her, then he leaned forward and said, “None of them think you’re telling the truth.”

Natalya flinched on the inside. He looked her in the eyes and then leaned back in his chair.

“I am going to ask you a question,” he said, face betraying no emotion now, “It’s going to be the only question I am going ask you again today and I will not repeat it. Not today, not ever.”

He waited and she nodded.

He pulled out some papers from the back of the file and pushed them over to her so she could see what it was. It was a contract for joining SHIELD. Then he leaned over, looked her in the eyes again and tapped the papers with his finger.

“Do you really want this?”

And there were so many ways to interpret that question’s meaning. She could still say yes and mean to kill every one of them. But at the same time, she knew that there was only one way he meant it and to her surprise; she saw he trusted her to answer the question that he had asked.

For all that Natalya didn’t know when she realized that she wanted to leave Red Room; she certainly knew when she realized that she really wanted to join SHIELD. Perhaps it was the unexpected measure of trust, true trust, or perhaps it was that she had finally figured out how he had been looking at her. It had been the look of a Commander looking at his solider not only as an asset but also as a person. Nick Fury was a Commander who cared.  And, strangely, for Natalya, that worked. It grounded her yet showed her the change to her life. And so she knew that as long as Nick Fury was director of SHIELD, she would want to be there.

She looked him in the eyes and said, “Yes.”

He looked at her for a few seconds more and then nodded. He produced a key un-cuffed her hands and handed her a pen. Natalya took it, pulled the papers to her, read them, and then, hand shaking ever so slightly, despite her efforts to stop it, signed the papers.

Fury took the papers, looked at them, put them in his coat and then unlocked her feet himself, stood up and said, “Welcome to SHIELD Miss Romanova.” And then swept out the door.

“Director,” she said. When he paused and half- turned she said, “Why did you believe I told the truth when no one else did?”

There was a pause and then he turned to face her fully, “Because you lie far better than you speak the truth, Agent Romanova.  You and I both know if you wanted them to believe you, they would have. But they didn’t. And that made me think you weren’t trying to sell a lie, Agent, you were trying too hard to tell the truth.”


	2. Chapter 2

 

SHIELD was bewildering. In theory, Natalya understood how they worked and what was going on. She understood why they did what they did and the way that they did it. She knew how people responded to it and she could exploit their reactions to being in that system. But in practical? Natalya felt like she was floundering. Like reality suddenly became a viscous goo that sucked her in and impeded movement. Sometimes her brain seemed to short circuit and had to reroute at times. She wondered if this was how culture shock felt. On the surface, there were many things similar to Red Room. She had a handler. Missions were given and coordinated though that handler. There was a head or heads. There were secrets everywhere.

But at the same time, there were so many things that were different about those very same things. Her handler was firm but not cruel. True he didn’t like her, but he wasn’t cruel or at least his slights were so far beneath her they didn’t register. The missions were given but they asked her if she was willing to do what she asked (though she suspected that doing so, so directly, was a special development for her) and she could raise objections about plans if she wished. There was Director Fury and she knew he answered to the World Security Council but she also knew that he would always do what he thought best for people so she had no problems. And yes, in SHIELD there were secrets everywhere but it was a spy division. They had to have secrets. But you could work your way into a position of trust and the secrets they carried weren’t always so scaring to the soul, weren’t the same weight that the secrets in Red Room were. Here she carried secrets to protect people. That was always the end game. In Red Room, the end game was always death. Natalya wanted a better purpose than death and strangely it seemed that she had found it.

The other agents didn’t like her and Natalya understood that. She didn’t particularly care for them either. But they still registered on her radar because SHIELD encouraged or rather didn’t discourage their agents from becoming friends and none of them feared that the other would use their secrets in some way or another. They trusted each other and the most bewildering thing of all was that they had no reason not to. That was what had knocked Natalya over in her room one night as she lay in her bunk reviewing the day. _Trust was a thing that existed here. And it could do so in relative safety._

Natalya didn’t like being confused. Oh she hid it well, acted like she got the program and pretended to get with it. But she was still floundering and she knew she had to learn to swim fast. Problem was, she didn’t know if she wanted to learn. She didn’t know how anyone could learn to live they way they did and still be alive for so long.

She had to learn how to swim. But if she did so, would she get shot?


	3. Chapter 3

One of the parts of getting with the program was that she had to learn all the protocols belonging to SHIELD, their code of conduct, their jurisdiction, their mandate and all the loopholes she could find within the rules assigned to them to do all the jobs they needed to do. They gave her most of these after her first few missions. She understood that. Why waste and give out secrets to a potential enemy. Shield may be more trusting but they weren't fools. Not entirely.

She also had to learn about the different alliances and treaties they had with the different countries and with their sister organization. It was a lot but Natalya was an old hand at learning a lot of information fast. She devoured it all and passed the test with flying colours, albeit she did leave some slightly nauseated examiners behind. Apparently they didn't like some of the loopholes she had found.

Natalya's next hurdle was a psyche evaluation. For a moment she had wondered why they had put her in the field before giving her a psyche eval, until she'd realized that they weren't going to waste time on a psyche eval when there had been a chance she'd leave. But now they were requiring it of her and it meant that they, well, it was a form of acceptance. She was theirs now. Truly theirs.

She passed the evaluation with ease. It amused her actually, just how easy it was to fake and lie her way through the examination. Although it did give her some insight just how far off the scale her own psyche was. And far, far off the scale it was too. Natalya didn't care. So long as she could function competently, her brain could run as it liked. At least that's what she told herself and tried not to look to hard her own lying words.

But that method turned around to bit her in her backside. Hard. Because Natlya's brain and SHIELD protocol didn't mesh. Was hard to mesh. Their objectives she agreed with, most of them anyway. But their way of achieving their objectives didn't mesh with the way she worked. She tried though. She remembered what to do, she did. But she just found it ineffective, too merciful sometimes, to easy.

It was only when she realized what was happening, that she was thinking like a red room operative, like a knife instead of a shield that she jumped back from her thoughts like a scalded cat. Her reaction both amused her and pleased her. It helped then, the realization, helped her to mesh her brain with the protocols because now she wanted to follow the protocols, wanted them to be her default, well, most of them. She still preferred to b a little sharper but she was learning something about mercy, something about doing the right thing, even if it sucked and was troublesome, even if it cost you.

She met Clint one time that month and then he had just sat with her, saying nothing and that was as much as she could bear from the man who saw too much of her. There was a story of redemption, lying somewhere inside his soul, she could see the scars where he'd cut himself open and excised what he didn't want, remade himself to be who he was.

He knew he didn't need to say it with her. That just sitting there and letting her see it was possible was enough. Natalya memorized the story and told it to herself whenever she wanted to see blood over her hands again when there wasn't need to be.

After a few more solo missions Natalya was called up to Director Fury's office along with her handler. It was the first time she'd seen him since he had brought her into SHIELD. He had her file on his desk and he was thumbing through it.

She and her handler stood and waited for him to speak.

"Ms. Romanova, he said finally, "You've been an asset to this organization since you've come here."

Natalya waited and said nothing.

"You've done good, clean work. No problems at all. Minor cleaning up needed after you were done. A good track record so far. But this was all working solo. I need to see that you can work in a team. Because we'll need you in a team operations in the future no doubt. So," he looked up from the file, "You'll be on the team for operation Blackbird. Plane leaves in 1600 hours." He tossed a new file over the desk.

"Dismissed," he barked.

Natalya took the file, nodded to him and headed out the room.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you all enjoyed.


End file.
